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Daybreak in Alabama When I get to be a composer
I'm gonna write me some music about
Daybreak in Alabama
And I'm gonna put the purtiest songs in it
Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist
And falling out of heaven like soft dew.
I'm gonna put some tall tall trees in it
And the scent of pine needles
And the smell of red clay after rain
And long red necks
And poppy colored faces
And big brown arms
And the field daisy eyes
Of black and white black white black people
And I'm gonna put white hands
And black hands and brown and yellow hands
And red clay earth hands in it
Touching everybody with kind fingers
And touching each other natural as dew
In that dawn of music when I
Get to be a composer
And write about daybreak
In Alabama.
Langston Hughes "Daybreak in Alabama" is written in a classic style of the late Langston Hughes. He
incorporated the realities of what is contained in both daybreaks and Alabama; dew, red clay,
dawn, and even "swamp mist" rising from the ground. Hughes used his own dialectic style to
enhance the flavor of his poem with a down home feel that also appears in Hughes' quintessential
literary character Jess B. Semple (Jess B. Simple). The dialectic style was also utilized by Black
poets like Claude McKay and Paul Laurence Dunbar. Hughes infused such a style with elements
of social commentary on racial harmony and collective existence.
Hughes filled the poem with the very confusion of the racial challenges of his own
times. Published in 1940, the poem reveals the agonizing age of Jim Crow, the Great Depression
and American dreams. The Black poet within Langston Hughes does not seem to speak out in
"daybreak in Alabama" as much as the humanitarian and artist within Langston Hughes.
Langston Hughes the humanitarian speaks of the possible day when even an Alabama daybreak
would be filled with a rainbow of collective cooperation. His humanitarian views pour out in
references to red clay hands, brown arms, colored faces and white black people.
The artist within Langston Hughes comes alive in the picture that Hughes painted for the reader.
He penned a work of art that appears to emerge like brushstrokes of genius on the blank slate of
open minds to a new generation of American readers. The Black poet Langston Hughes
demonstrated the literary skills to craft a poem that meshed both the humanitarian and the artist
with his own style, voice and tone. Hughes' literary works show that he could not only fill his
poems and stories with the racial tensions of his own upbringing, but also add in some aspects of
euphoric aspirations for both Alabama and America.
Taken from
http://www.helium.com/items/2224172‐poetry‐analysis‐daybreak‐in‐alabama‐by‐langston‐hughes by Bruce Jackson